Cryptography: Theory and Practice

Cryptography: Theory and Practice

Amazon.com
Douglas R. Stinson's Cryptography: Theory and Practice is a mathematically intensive examination of cryptography, including ciphers, the Data Encryption Standard (DES), public key cryptography, one-way hash functions, and digital signatures. Stinson's explication of "zero-sum proofs"--a process by which one person lets another person know that he or she has a password without actually revealing any information--is especially good.

If you are new to the math behind cryptography but want to tackle it, the author covers all of the required background to understand the real mathematics here. Cryptography includes extensive exercises with each chapter and makes an ideal introduction for any math-literate person willing to get acquainted with this material.

Book Description
Cryptography is an outstanding book that covers all the major areas of cryptography in a readable, mathematically precise form. Several chapters deal with especially active areas of research and give the reader a quick introduction and overview of the basic results in the area. Cryptography provides the mathematical theory that is necessary in order to understand how the various systems work. Most algorithms are presented in the form of pseudocode, together with examples and informal discussion of the underlying ideas. The book gives careful and comprehensive treatment of all the essential core areas of cryptography. Also, several chapters present recent topics that have not received thorough treatment in previous textbooks. Such topics include authentication codes, secret sharing schemes, identification schemes, and key distribution.

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The philosophy underlying the previous edition stays the same. The presentation of concepts is rigorous but neither difficult nor trivial, suitable for readers with basic notions of linear algebra. Moreover, new material has been added.

Chapter 3, which deals with block ciphers and linear and differential cryptoanalysis, is very well-written. This is the best presentation of such a subject in few pages I have seen until now.

Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 have been significantly updated and expanded with concepts and techniques that are fundamental in order to understand current researches and state of knowledge in Cryptography (e.g., random oracle model, semantic security, new attacks against public key cryptosystems, an in-depth introduction to elliptic curve ...).

Compared to the previous edition, more emphasys has been given in some parts to security proofs (e.g, chapter 4), and several new exercises have been proposed at the end of each chapter.

Other readers have pointed out that there are some typos (the author has made available an errata list on his home page) but I think that the value of the book is not reduced in any way.

In my opinion it is a great book for people who want to be introduced to problems, ideas, and techniques used in Cryptography.

Product Details

* Hardcover: 434 pages
* Publisher: CRC-Press; 1 edition (May 17, 1995)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0849385210
* ISBN-13: 978-0849385216